Assess Communication Repair and Clarification

To assess communication repair and clarification, preserve Benji's original message, evidence of a breakdown, the partner's clarification request, accessible repair options, and what the partner confirms afterward. Distinguish repetition, expansion, substitution, demonstration, referent change, abandonment, and successful mutual understanding. Measure both partners' responsibilities and burden. A repair is an interaction sequence, rather than proof that Benji's first message was deficient.

Define the breakdown

Record the original message, intended referent or action when known, partner response, mismatch evidence, environmental interference, and how Benji knows clarification is needed.

Offer accessible repair options

Include repetition, expansion, spelling, AAC, photo, text, gesture, demonstration, alternative wording, referent change, partner rephrase, and stopping. Preserve Benji's chosen method.

Measure partner clarification quality

A specific request can identify what is unclear. Vague repeated what prompts may add burden. Record wait time, access, response, confirmation, and whether the partner also repairs.

Define successful repair

Use mutual understanding tied to the message, such as accurate confirmation, answer, referent selection, or agreed action. Record uncertainty when success cannot be verified.

Use this sequence to assess repair

Preserve the original message, identify the breakdown, classify both partners' actions, record repair form and burden, verify understanding, ask Benji about fit, and change the earliest weak link.

Build Benji's communication-repair assessment

Create one versioned communication-repair assessment for the accessible transit-route planning. Include Benji's priority, partners, activity, modes, person-authored turns, topic and timing rules, latency, overlap, initiation, response, repair, script and prompt status, partner behavior, context, health, privacy, client experience, passes, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, evidence limits, qualified owner, correction, and reassessment trigger. Store only decision-relevant information with role-limited access.

Validate Benji's evidence

Reproduce 16 breakdowns, 13 repairs across five forms, two abandonments, one partner-rephrase request, 11/13 confirmations, and two actions without confirmation. Verify original message, breakdown evidence, clarification, authorship, timing, burden, partner repair, success, and unresolved outcomes.

Connect Benji's evidence to a decision

Benji's assessment can support better partner clarification requests, accessible repair shortcuts, visual referents, confirmation, or permission to stop. It can also reveal when the partner should repair their own message first.

Work through Benji's example

Benji encounters 16 documented breakdowns. He repairs 13: four repetitions, three AAC expansions, two map demonstrations, two substitutions, and two referent changes. He abandons two and asks the partner to rephrase once. Partners confirm understanding after 11/13 repairs and act without confirmation after two. The record retains each path. Preserve every planned and valid exchange, partner and setting version, communication mode, authored contribution, topic, timing, prompt, script, repair, partner action, access and health state, pass, withdrawal, invalid event, correction, and unresolved item. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It supplies no diagnosis, universal conversation hierarchy, treatment effect, legal conclusion, coverage decision, payment promise, or outcome guarantee for Benji.

Address Benji's main interpretation risk

Counting only Benji's changes ignores unclear partner questions and failures to confirm. Repetition can succeed when the partner missed the message, while expansion may add unnecessary effort. Treating abandonment as failure can pressure Benji to continue a costly exchange. Review communication access, message authorship, turn rules, topics, timing, partner questions and waits, prompts, scripts, task cues, partner familiarity, context, health, fatigue, privacy, preference, direct experience, and design strength separately. A convincing sequence cannot make an unsafe, inaccessible, unwanted, unauthorized, or irrelevant conversation goal clinically appropriate.

Keep scope and authority clear for Benji

For Benji's communication-repair assessment, the CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, medical needs, risk, data, documentation, and evaluation for covered people. The BACB outline is examination content. These sources supply no individualized conversation norm, language diagnosis, legal authority, or requirement that Benji speak, answer, or converse in a typical style.

Treat timing as dyadic and contextual for Benji

The automated latency study analyzed recordings from 210 child-adult pairs and derived non-speech intervals between turns. It also measured adult-partner latency and linked change to a particular intervention dataset. A later turn-taking context study found that latency and overlap varied with activity and partner familiarity in its child samples. These studies support measuring both partners and context for Benji. They supply no universal optimal speed, diagnostic cutoff, or reason to shorten AAC composition time.

Use topic categories descriptively for Benji

The recent topic-shift study distinguished contingent responses, associated and non-associated shifts, reintroductions, explicit and implicit markers, and immediate partner prompts. Its coding system illustrates how one off-topic category can erase meaningful distinctions. It does not establish that topic continuation is better than change for Benji or that a laboratory exchange captures everyday conversational fit.

Keep AAC, repair, and partner findings bounded for Benji

An AAC intervention study involved four minimally speaking autistic children ages six to nine and targeted turn requests, question answers, and comments with peers. A longitudinal repair study compared several neurodevelopmental groups and defined repair as responding to a clarification request. These studies support explicit message, partner, repair, and context records. Their populations and procedures do not create one conversation curriculum, mastery rule, or expected outcome for Benji.

Preserve assent and communication access for Benji

Breaux and Smith propose individualized assent and withdrawal practices while describing an evolving evidence base. Their paper is practice guidance rather than a separate BACB mandate. ASHA's AAC portal says AAC users should always have access to their tools or devices. Give Benji an accessible way to contribute, compose, pass, ask, repair, pause, end, or withdraw. Do not require speech, speed, eye contact, topic conformity, or social endurance as the price of participation.

Choose Benji's next bounded action

Benji adds show map, say it another way, and stop messages to his device. Partners confirm the understood route before acting when the consequence matters. The log also records who first detects each breakdown. Record the qualified owner, source evidence, effective date, current partner, activity, mode, and context version, ordinary supports, communication and health state, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement route, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the earlier record when partners, vocabulary, devices, modes, topics, settings, outcomes, health, or priorities change. A repaired arrangement creates a dated phase rather than an error in Benji's prior communication.

Close Benji's assessment

Review the communication-repair assessment with Benji, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that person-authored turns, partner turns, timing, topic relation, repair, scripts, prompts, question load, context, and client experience remain separate; every denominator is reproducible; AAC, privacy, and basic access remain protected; urgent needs received action; and conclusions stay bounded to sampled exchanges. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.

How to Assess Communication Repair and Clarification